Wednesday, December 20, 2006

On Religion and Love: Some Random Thoughts Prompted by the Season

I have said before, in another context, that I have wondered whether love, in our present moment, might not represent the ultimate taboo subject for critical thought. Sexuality, even queer sexualities—sure, that’s “in” and cool as an academic subject, but . . . love? Now, with Christmas looming [a holiday that, in one sense, revolves around the idea—admittedly a Western Christian notion—that God loved us so much—“us” denoting stupid, vile, and sinful humans—that “He” sent his “only son” to earth to die to redeem us; only, it wasn’t a real death, was it? I mean, if you know you are going to “rise again,” it kind of takes the sting out of death, but, oh heck, forget the fine print], and also with various religious and ideological conflicts raging around the world, I am thinking again about love, and about all the ways in which I am both in love and in hate with religion, both as a human impulse [or even, possibly, as a substrata of human neurology] and as a cultural institution, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon, what-have-you. I should be up front, I think, and share that, although I was raised Catholic by parents who were mainly indifferent to religion [but who signed a contract with my mother’s family to raise me Catholic so that her family—Irish Catholic in a strenuously dogmatic fashion—would accept my mother’s marriage to my father, who was raised by “dissenting Congregationalists”—seriously; my brother and sister were raised Episcopal and every Sunday the three of us would dutifully tramp off to two different churches while my parents mainly stayed home and drank martinis and listened to Sinatra LPs], I have spent most of my life fiercely wanting to be Jewish. Think of me as a kind of Simone Weil-in-reverse. She was raised by agnostic Jews and spent most of her life wanting to be Catholic, but never converted because, in the end, she couldn’t belong to anything, whether a labor union or a church or a political party, that was “organized” [and that insisted, further, on strict adherence to any kind of ideological dogma]. And neither can I.

But still. I really have wanted to be Jewish for a long time, and almost converted a few years back when my best friend Amy [raised by an Arkansas Baptist] converted. We talk about it a lot and I will be attending her bat mitzvah on December 30th, so this subject has been on my mind a lot lately. There is not enough time to enumerate all the reasons here why I have wanted to convert; suffice to say, it has something to do with how I view Judaism as a deeply ethical religion that focuses more on the “here and now” of daily life than does Christianity, which I see as too focused on rewards [or punishments] in a supposed afterlife [it’s the whole “works” versus “grace” thing, and I’m on the side of “works”]. When I finally realized that I couldn’t belong to any religion at all because I mainly can’t stomach the horrors done in the name of religion [and because, deep down, I don’t really believe God exists and I think any idea or representation of God is mainly a wildly hopeful fiction], and also because I think religious orientation is deeply culturally constructed [hence, if I’m anything, I’m Irish Catholic and trying to be a Jew would be like forcing myself into an historically inauthentic identity], I gave up on the idea of conversion. And anyway, conversion from what, exactly? Since I’ve never really practiced any religion with any degree of sincerity, converting *to* something would be a deeply inauthentic act. Or so I think. But like Woody Allen’s rabbi Ben [played by Sam Waterston] in Crimes and Misdemeanors, I want to believe, “with all my heart, that the universe has a moral structure.” In any case, I mainly sublimate my religious feelings by reading Simone Weil [especially her short writing collected in Gravity and Grace and her only long work, L’Enracinement], Emmanuel Levinas, and Zygmunt Bauman [especially Postmodern Ethics], and watching Kieslowski films [especially his Decalogue and Trois Coleurs trilogy]. For the consideration of fate and chance, I throw in Paul Auster and leave it at that.

But why should any of this matter here on In The Middle? Well, perhaps because religion, in general, is so deeply historical—it relies upon the imprimatur of history to lend it a certain sacred realness and “truth.” It has need of stories—narratives—and the more “ancient,” the better. Indeed, it relies on the idea that virtue, or morality, is not possible without its codified encouragements and threats, all grounded in historical precedents. It partakes in primeval forms of mysticism and magic. In some traditions—especially the Christian one—it offers a chance to cheat time, and therefore history itself. It “grounds” itself in sites that become artifactual pathways to foundationally sacred moments in past time. It offers images of an “original” communalism, but also of various “original” heroic acts of self-sacrifice, without which love is not thought possible [or eternally guaranteed]. Indeed, the “old” stories of religion provide somewhat of an antidote to the insight of sociobiology that, as David P. Barash put it in a recent edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, “selfishness resides in our very genes.” Or, as Freud put it, in Civilization and Its Discontents, the “ideal” commandment of the New Testament, “love thy neighbor as thyself,” “is really justified by the fact that nothing else runs so strongly counter to the original nature of man.” Further, Freud wrote,

. . . men are not gentle creatures, who want to be loved, who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus. Who, in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion? As a rule this cruel aggressiveness waits for some provocation or puts itself at the service of some other purpose, whose goal might also have been reached by milder measures. In circumstances that are favorable to it, when the mental counter-forces which ordinarily inhibit it are out of action, it also manifests itself spontaneously and reveals man as a savage beast to whom consideration towards his own kind is something alien.

Ouch. But, while loving one’s neighbor may be the ideal commandment of the New Testament, the supreme commandment of the Old Testament [and of the Torah, or Pentateuch], would seem to be, “obey God,” and further, “obey God without question, without hesitation, without even thinking about it.” Such is the lesson Abraham demonstrates when he agrees to murder his son at God’s behest, and also because when God initially calls him, his answer in Hebrew translates as, “Here I am,” as opposed to Cain’s response to God’s question regarding his brother’s whereabouts, which is to both say “I don’t know” and to ask, belligerently, “am I my brother’s keeper?” [or, more literally: “am I supposed to keep track of where my brother goes?”]. The stories of both Cain and Abraham, foundational in many respects for Jews and Christians alike, are highly important in the Western tradition and yet, I would argue, they offer counterintuitive lessons. Throughout the Middle Ages, the figure of Cain was especially important as the historical progenitor of “monstrous” races [or, at the least, of pathological persons], and much medieval theological writing—both Christian and Rabbinic—sought to explain the various ways in which Cain was somehow spiritually [and therefore, also humanistically] deformed even before he killed Abel [he is viewed in some Rabbinic accounts, for example, as the child of Eve and Satan, or as having been born from the “impure” side of Eve’s body, with Abel being born from the “pure” side, etc.]. Grendel in Beowulf, as we all well know, is supposedly a descendant of Cain’s. A much overlooked and incredibly comprehensive treatment of this subject is Oliver F. Emerson’s “Legends of Cain, Especially in Old and Middle English,” PMLA 21.4 [1906]: 831-929.

But the point I mainly want to make here is that, as mightily as some may have striven to demonize Cain, his story, I would argue, is one that we can readily understand, even as we may harshly judge his actions. In other words, he had a very human motive for killing his brother: jealousy. God favors Abel’s offering over Cain’s, thereby making Cain feel belittled and unwanted. Fratricide, of course, is seen as one of the highest types of murder, even today, but the original story displays, not a monstrous man, but a very human one—albeit, ill-equipped to deal with what he views at the world’s injustice to him. Abraham, on the other hand, held up by many theologians, and even philosophers such as Levinas, as an ideal example of a perfect servant of God’s [or, of the ethical relationship “to the Other,” more generally], appears almost inhuman to us. No matter how many times we are told otherwise, his unstinting obedience, even to the point of being willing to murder his own son, strikes us as unfeeling, even barbarous [a great and much underappreciated film that touches upon this subject, which is based on a true story, is The Believer, starring Ryan Gosling as Daniel Balint, a Jew who hid his identity in order to become a neo-Nazi and when discovered, committed suicide]. What kind of a god, we want to ask, would create humans just so he could ask them to annihilate each other in his name? Of course, God isn’t really asking that—it’s just another one of his “head games,” but why should such blind obedience to a “first principle,” let’s say, always trump one’s individual desires? Why is freedom given, only to be used as a kind of cognitive technology for always choosing God over everything else? Wouldn’t that result in a kind of historical passivity in which, frankly, human history could not even happen, or could only go in one direction?

It is precisely because human beings love the world, and those closest to them in that world, too much, and will often choose that world over God, that there is, indeed, what I would call real history—one that has no particular direction, but is tied instead to the various passions of its actors [with these passions ranging from love to hate, joy to bottomless grief]. This has something to do, too, I believe, with what Freud identified as the libido, or “love-force,” of which sexuality is only one manifestation. As Jonathan Lear explains it,

. . . a person is erotically bound to the world. That is a condition of there being a world for him: that is a condition of his sanity. . . . love is not [in this scenario] just a feeling or a discharge of energy, but an emotional orientation to the world. That orientation demands that the world present itself to us as worthy of our love. That is what it is for the world to be lovable. . . . The world must now be conceived as, at least potentially, providing an occasion for [individuation] . . . . [Love and Its Place in Nature: A Philosophical Interpretation of Freudian Psychoanalysis (New York, 1990), pp. 153-54]

At the same time, certain cataclysmic historical events, including wars, have occurred because certain people in particular places have believed, fervently, that God demanded something of them that apparently requires destruction of cities, murder, and even suicide. In other words, there will always be those who buy wholly in to a version of a sacred history in which this world is a kind of fighting ground between differently “chosen” groups, and in which love of one’s self or of particular other selves, or the concern for one’s individuation in this world, will always matter less than the supposed “bringing about” [or, revelation] of a queerly utopic and utterly inhuman future [although in the heat of the various acts of bringing this future about, we are still dealing with Freud’s love-/life-force, which can pull us in various directions, toward mob mentalities and onward with those mobs toward death]. And it is because of this state of affairs that I, finally, “lose” my religion, and side with one of my students in my British literature survey course this past semester, who, when writing about Book 9 of Milton’s Paradise Lost, indicated that, even though he understands that Adam chose wrongly when deciding to face death with Eve rather than obey God, that Adam would not really be human if he had chosen otherwise. “On this rock floating in space called Earth,” he wrote, “it is human to want to be with others, and not to want to be alone, even with God in Paradise.” Amen.

10 comments:

it is human to want to be with others, and not to want to be alone, even with God in Paradise

What an eloquent student you have, Eileen. And what an eloquent post.

I wonder if you'll grant being a Jew the same complexity, fragmentation, self-conflict, rivenness as you give to being a Christian? Your snippet of autobiography mentioned how different Christianities police each other as potential rivals. The same is true of the multiple ways of being Jewish ... My family belongs to a reform temple, for example, because none of us particularly believe in God (for Kid #1, God is someone he would like to believe in but suspects might be a version of Santa; for Kid #2, "God" is not yet a vocabulary word). Judaism -- at least reform Judaism -- doesn't necessarily have all that much trouble with atheists or agnostics. Judaism in general is not a religion of orthodoxy (what you believe is something to be argued over and is perpetually doubtful) so much of ortho-praxis (the passing along of ritual as tradition is central). Personally, I also like how Judaism foregrounds the home as the sacred place/space.

But Judaism is far from monolithic. Orthodox and conservative Jews disparage many of the choices made by the reform movement. Tempers flare over who is a real Jew.

Anyway, I am with you on focusing upon ameliorating the communal present rather than dreaming an afterlife where you get the goodies you are lacking now. Here is the congregation my family belongs to. We joined because it is headed by a witty and skeptical rabbi, and because temple life is centered around social action (Tikkun Olam / repairing the world). The first temple activity that Kid #2 took part in, for example, was joining the congregation in the March for Women's Lives. She was in a Snugglie with a "Planned Parenthood" sticker on it, all of 24 days old.

I think we shouldn't make the assumption that God was showing favoritism to Abel, which then quite rightly upsets Cain. We don't know if God knew that Cain may have been prone to losing his temper or not and that something was going to happen if Cain didn't control himself. But what we do know, according to the Bible, is that God warned Cain in advance that losing his temper could lead him to committing sin. He asked Cain: “Will you, for your part, get the mastery over it (sin)?”(Genesis 4:5-7)

With regard to the religion of people, what appears to be the most important thing to God? Their religion or their behaviour? If God is impartial then He looks into people's hearts anyway and not what building they pray in.

If on the other hand, He expressly asks His people to get out of all religion because it is all thoroughly corrupt and its followers have not hesitated to fight in wars against 'the enemy of God and country', thus ignoring one of His most basic commandments in Exodus 20:13 not to murder, then it may serve as a warning to us to get out while we can and not delude ourselves into thinking that our particular religion will somehow be exempt from his examination and judgment. Unless of course we're convinced our religion is OK...(compare Revelation 18:1-5)

Alexandre--thanks for your very thoughtful comments; I can't really read God's refusal of Cain's offering, while accepting Abel's as anything less than favortism. Perhaps that is my bias as a reader, but I have always been discomfited by what seems like yet another "set up" on God's part--tell Cain not to get mad [i.e. let "sin" get the better of him], make Cain mad, then see what happens. Granted, just my [queer] reading, perhaps. I also can't see God, at least as he is portrayed in the Old and New Testaments, or in the Koran, as impartial. He is always taking sides--Jesus himself explicitly states in the New Testament that he comes bearing, not love, but a sword, and that because of him, familes will be divided against each other, etc.

JJC--I do, of course, grant that being a Jew also carries with it self-conflict and rivenness, and I am well aware of "reform" Judaism versus the supposedly more "orthodox"/conservative temples. I, too, once chose a particular Catholic church because when I first went there the priest was wearning a yarmulke and Birkenstock sandals and after his sermon played "Rocky Top" [Univ. of Tennessee's football theme song] on the organ. Several of the medievalists at UT attend this church regularly, and I miss it. I have not set foot in a church since moving away from Knoxville [1999]. One of the reasons I am attracted to Judaism is precisely because of what you describe as its perpetual doubt and questioning, and also because of its emphasis on the home as sacred space. I also think of Judaism as being a very socially activist religion, as is Catholicism is certain contexts.

Peter, who was brought up a Jew and well aware of how God had dealt with the Jews and other nations up until then, remarked: "For a certainty I perceive that God is not partial, but in every nation the man that fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him" - Acts 10:34,35.

Micah also wrote: "He has told you, O earthling man, what is good. And what is God asking back from you but to exercise justice and to love kindness and to be modest in walking with your God?" - Micah 6:8.

"Do not think I came to put peace upon the earth; I came to put, not peace, but a sword. For I came to cause division, with a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a young wife against her mother-in-law" - Matthew 10:34,35.

Yes, it does appear that Jesus is saying he wants to cause division but knowing the realities of human life it may be more likely, in harmony with Jesus message to 'love your neighbour as yourself', that he was trying to say that he could see that his message would divide people up between those who wanted to follow it and those who didn't, with resultant disagreements occuring.

Alexandre--the quotations and thoughts you provide are certainly illuminating, but for me, the final word on the subject of Christianity's divisive [and even racist/anti-Semitic] nature is Elaine Pagels's book "The Origin of Satan." Best, Eileen

I am a Christian, but I share many of the same questions that you voice here (Cain/Abraham, Adam/Eve--even your love/hate relationship with religion. For me, it's Christians that really tend to get on my nerves...)

While I offer you no real answers (I'm sure you've read the same Bible verses that I have, and I'm sure you're aware of how they often seem about as helpful as Genius' responses to Amans), I am comforted by the passage in Matthew about the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46). I think Christians (I'll only speak to what I know) do get too caught up in the whole punishment/reward mentality, reducing God to a sort of pathetic Santa Claus that doles out the eternal equivalents of coal and presents.

The Matthew passage shows everything turned on its head and sheds some welcome light on "the whole 'works' versus 'grace' thing." It is rather ironic that the people that are blessed are 1.) blessed because of their "works", and yet 2.) are unaware of performing those very works for which they are blessed. It seems a sort of unconscious works wins the day. A friend of mine once said, after citing numerous Biblical examples, "It seems that humility=greatness. Do we dare to believe this?" I think it's the same kind of paradoxical thing with works and grace. (That said, I'm still on the side of grace.)

There is a Simone Weil quote that I have always liked, and forgive me for quoting from memory.(I'm studying abroad, and "The Need for Roots" did not make it into my "books" suitcase. I have two copies of SGGK, but no Weil.) It is something to the effect of: "The fact that human beings posess an eternal destiny imposes only one obligation: respect. And this respect can only be performed through the medium of man's earthly needs."

This quote provides a nice segue from the Matthew passage to the different ideas of the "neighbor" (i.e. Freud's definition versus Jesus' in the parable of the Good Samaritan). While I am not so naive as to deny Freud's observations regarding human nature, I have often seen and benefitted from acts that can only be described as selfless and loving (I think that's why I side with grace).

Once I was hitchhiking and a woman stopped to pick me up. She had a black eye, bruises down her right arm, and she told me--on the verge of tears--that she was driving to her daughter's house after her husband of 4 years had beat her up while they were on holiday in Mexico. (She said he had never hit her before then.) I'm sitting in the passenger seat thinking "Of all the people that didn't need to stop and pick me up, certainly this lady has enough to worry about without a long-haired hitchhiker sitting next to her." Then she hits me with: "I saw you standing there and had to stop...people have been so kind to me over the last few days, I couldn't just drive by without offering you a ride."

The bruises on her body were enough to prove "homo homini lupus." But man can surprise you sometimes too. Maybe Freud should have hitchhiked more.

Josh--thanks so much for your thoughts, that hitchhiking anecodte, and the Simone Weil quotation. A great explication of the Weil quotation can be found in her essay, which she wrote during WWII, "Draft of a Statement for Human Obligations." Good reading in these times. Cheers, Eileen

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